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Strange Sights in Pekin

HE Central Street of the most ear-piercing description; and the Chinese City of Pekin noise of buying and selling, bawling and presents one of the most wrangling, mirth and laughter, makes up animated spectacles in a very Babel of sound. the world. The long A curious place is a Chinese theatre. lines of huts and booths, The play may be a continuous story or of every size and form allegory, and may run on for months, a and color, give the street new act or chapter being given every all the aspect of a fair. Everywhere evening. The actors often appear in surges the dense, ever-moving crowd- gaudy costumes. These are costly and carriages and mules and horses and sedan- highly ornamental, or cheap and grochairs and hand-barrows mixed in inex- tesque, as the performance may require. tricable confusion.

Itinerant dealers of Beggars swarm in Pekin. There is an all sorts swarm everywhere, some display- official who may be called King of the ing their stock in hampers slung from Beggars, who looks after them, and is their necks; others selling the food which supposed to be responsible for their good is cooking before them in public on port- behavior. They roam about the city, and able stoves; the blacksmith sets up his clamor at a house or shop door until reestablishment in a suitable corner, and lief is given them; but they must move blows his bellows and wields his hammer on as soon as they get a copper coin. The without interruption; the barber rings coin in ordinary use the cash-is of very his little bell, and sees customers sit down small value, so that ten beggars can be on his little stool to have their heads relieved for the worth of one cent of our shaved, eyebrows painted, "tails" ad- money. During summer the beggars justed and garments brushed, all for a pass the nights in the streets and in doorsmall fee; story-tellers, singers, conjurers, ways, but in winter they herd together in quack doctors, hold forth to eager crowds, ranges of huts set up for them. No pubthat ever and anon break up suddenly as lic provision is made for the destitute, some grandee is borne past in triumph, or but the shop-keepers acknowledge their as processions pass bearing, with lament- claims to relief, and in the cold weather able cries, corpses to the graves, or, with subscriptions are raised to open kitchens squalling music, brides to their husbands. for the gratuitous supply of gruel or por It must be remembered that the various street vendors by no means offer their wares in silence; on the contrary, they all loudly proclaim the quality of their goods and their low prices in shrill tones of the ridge to the poor at the city gates and some of the temples.

In all the principal thoroughfares there are guards of soldiers, who are under rigid instructions to use their whips with- (186)